Affliction cancels Trilogy, returns to UFC as sponsor

[rajuB4U]

Affliction Entertainment has officially canned its third show, paving the way for Affliction Clothing to return to the Ultimate Fighting Championship's good graces as an advertiser.
Just eight days before its Aug. 1 card, Affliction Entertainment today announced it has abandoned plans for the show. The cancellation follows the loss of its main event, which was supposed to be between Fedor Emelianenko and Josh Barnett, the No. 1 and No. 2 heavyweights in the USA TODAY/SB Nation consensus rankings.

Also, Affliction Clothing reached a deal with UFC to return as a sponsor. That agreement was first reported by Yahoo Sports' Kevin Iole and later confirmed to me by a UFC spokeswoman via e-mail: "Kevin's story is accurate."
It brings the relationship between Affliction and UFC full circle. Affliction Clothing officials have said previously that they only formed Affliction Entertainment to enter the fight business because UFC banned its fighters from wearing Affliction T-shirts at its events. UFC has said it was the other way around, with the prohibition levied only after Affliction got into fight promotion.
Affliction's future as a fight promoter all but died earlier this week when the California State Athletic Commission denied a fighters' license to Barnett because he tested positive for an anabolic steroid. Affliction on Friday said it could not come up with a fighter who could be marketed on such a short notice to fill Barnett's spot against Emelianenko.
The incident underscored the difficulty faced by would-be competitors to UFC in matching its deep roster, particularly for heavyweights.
There are many ranked fighters outside UFC, but they're scattered across the landscape with different companies that sometimes have conflicting promotional goals. While an individual fighter such as Emelianenko can easily find an opponent for a single fight, it's hard to gather a deep roster of talent under one banner for multiple bouts -- even UFC can't get all the heavyweights it wants.
"Finding an opponent for the number-one ranked MMA heavyweight champion in such a short period of time was a huge endeavor and I'm thrilled at the amount of fighters willing to take on this challenge," said Tom Atencio, vice president of Affliction Entertainment. "But in the end, we just didn't have enough time to promote a new fight to our standards."
Several fighters, or their representatives, publicly expressed interest in replacing Barnett, including Vitor Belfort, Jeff Monson, Mo Lawal and Don Frye. Emelianenko's manager, Vadim Finkelstein, proposed Strikeforce heavyweight Brett Rogers as a replacement, although a Strikeforce official said Rogers would not be available for Aug. 1. Rogers and his team wanted the fight as well.
Star-crossed efforts
Despite a roster stacked with MMA stars, Affliction Entertainment's efforts have been troubled from the start.
The company signed several big-name fighters to lucrative contracts far beyond what other promotions were willing to pay and initially overloaded on flashy extras such as live music. Affliction's inaugural event lost substantial amounts of money by the company's own admission, despite a live gate of $2.8 million and more than 100,000 pay-per-view buys.
Things never got better.
Hope fizzled for a blockbuster fight between Emelianenko and UFC's estranged heavyweight champion, Randy Couture, when Couture gave up his legal fight and returned to UFC in September.
An injury suffered by Emelianenko on the July show left him unable to fight for 120 days, and Affliction delayed its second show by three months while its tried to build a hybrid boxing/MMA card that never came to pass.
When Affliction did set a date for a second show, its partner, Golden Boy Promotions, arranged on a high-profile boxing match on the same night, in the same metropolitan area.
And for all of Affliction's existence, UFC and its parent company, Zuffa, attacked with closely timed live events and aggressive counterprogramming, such as broadcasting recent pay-per-views for free at the same time as Affliction's shows.
Atencio occasionally complained to reporters that his company was being held to an unfair standard, given that it was a new promotion. After all, even Zuffa needed several years to turn UFC into a success.
But Zuffa had the Fertitta brothers' deep pockets and a dearth of notable competition in the United States in the first half of this decade. While Pride merrily racked up huge audiences in Japan, Zuffa could make mistakes on this side of the world without fear of a rival taking advantage.
Affliction had no such luxury in today's MMA landscape, largely because of UFC itself. UFC President Dana White openly admits that he won't make things easy for his perceived competitors -- and he singled out Affliction as a target.
Atencio was reduced to challenging White to a physical fight, something that the UFC boss simply scoffed at.
"If I were him, I'd want to fight me too," White told Yahoo in May. "I'm the guy who is killing all of his hopes and dreams."

[DimeCFH]

Good freakin read man. Thanks alot for that info. I'm actually happy that happened. Now, MAYBE some of the Affliction's GOOD fighters can find a new home in the UFC, and test their true skill once and for all. The UFC really outta try to get back Vitor Belfort, Matt Lindland, Josh Barnett, and who's that other guy.... FEDOR!!!!!!